The Sunset of My Life

By Joseph Lange

A man goes through the four seasons of his life much too quickly. The hustle and frantic pace of life blinds him to the wonders that God puts before him daily-the butterfly that alights upon a small flower completely missed, the sunrises and sunsets without fanfare as he toils to his eventual end. If he is lucky, he realizes the folly of his ways and slows to see the beauty before him, appreciate the little things, the quiet things, the ripple on the pond, stopping to breathe and reflect, and perhaps to listen to the soft sounds of God's great work. I have entered the sunset of my life. My time on earth ordained by God wanes like the setting of the sun, and as the brilliant colors light the sky, so does my love for what God has given me through my many years. To see the singular snowflake, hear the cry of the chickadee, I invite you to come with me as my stories tell of my journey to this moment in time. Sit back in a quiet spot, open this book, feel its pages, and see what I have seen. May God bless and keep you and, perhaps, slow you down.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 27, 2020
• ISBN: 9781644687161

Book preview

Finishing What You Started

It had been ten months since I ran anything over three miles. After the 13.1 WhistleStop Half Marathon, I had grown complacent and fat. The normal routine of running the snowshoe races during the winter to stay in shape was not continued as I struggled with the February winter. A bit of food here, a can of beer there, and the result was unavoidable.

March came and, with it, my sixty-fifth birthday. A man does a lot of pondering when he turns sixty-five. Michelle and I decided we had better get back out on the road and run or any more delay, and it would be near impossible to do so. I put on a bit too tight running shirt and laced up the shoes.

The first two hundred yards was pure agony. I realized that the use it or lose it saying was a valid one. Every joint screamed, and my mind said, Old man, you need to stop this, yet I lumbered on.

After returning to the house, I sank into an Epson salt bath, and as the sweat dripped, my forehead had to resolve myself to the fact that it would be a long way back to the man who had ran 13.1 miles in what now seemed to be an eternity ago.

My wife continued to encourage me as we ran, and she was regaining her old form. I, on the other hand, continued to plod along, each step arguing with my mind on the merits of what I was doing. Soon we decided that if we were going to get back into this racing life, we would have to sign up for a real one again.

May 27, we entered a race, and it was hot. My body doesn’t like hot. Again, I step dragged along the course as my wife took first in her age-group. Returning to form appeared to be easier for her. Me, not so much.

Three more races later and although my legs felt like exploding after each one, we signed up for the Kampmeyer Memorial. I am a retired deputy, so this race has a special meaning for me. I decided to run the ten kilometers although more on emotions than ability. The race started, and after three miles, I saw the turn to the right that separated the ten kilometers from the five kilometers and asked myself what I was doing turning right.

Out to the west toward Cemetery Hill, for those who run, it is a long way from Highway N to the top of that hill. My legs were on fire, but I finally got to the top, and then the storm came.

What are you trying to prove? my mind asked me. I didn’t have an answer right at that point.

It poured, and the wind was raging. As I ran alone in that wind and driving rain, I glanced to my right and saw the grave of Jameson Kampmeyer. For a minute, I stopped and just stared at it. Then I did not know if it was the rain streaming down my face or tears of pure respect. A man gets emotional at times, and this was one of those times.

One thing I did know for certain, my ass was finishing that race. I gave a right-hand salute to the grave and, with renewed drive, spurned on by both anger at my inability to maintain a steady pace and respect for a man who had given his life for others, and continued down the road to the turnaround.

Finally, I saw the final turn that would take me to the finish line, and as the rain poured down, I finished what I had started.

Jameson’s dad gave me a little memorial coin as few years back, and I treasure it not only for what it represents but because his father gave it to me. I think heroes teach us a lot of things, sacrifice, dedication, and perhaps a simple thing like…finishing what you started.

Let us never forget the sacrifice of heroes.

God Opens a Window

There is a saying that God never closes a door without opening a window. Very hard to believe when you are going through a trial or a loss. I would suppose in my long life I can attest to it as being true. I recall back in 1980 just building a new home and having the factory where I worked shut down a month after we moved into it. Two tiny little girls and no job. How could God do this to me? I thought. Where will I find a job that pays $7.10 an hour?

You couldn’t buy a job back then. The recession had decimated the landscape. My wife told me about a weekend security job at a local hospital. The department reported to the facilities director, but God had a plan. It paid $4.00 an hour. You swallow your pride when your family needs you. I went there and tried to make the best of it. My wife also had made the sacrifice and went to work at the same place in the laundry earlier.

God had put her there for a reason.

I recall the first night I thought, Is this my fate?

It wasn’t long, and I was promoted to supervisor, and not long after that, I was working, and a local deputy sheriff who ran the country reserve officer program came in to get his hand fixed from a tough arrest. After talking to him, I was soon to be a reserve deputy sheriff.

My wife, after working tirelessly in that laundry, was soon in the mail room and working harder than I wanted her to. She would work days in the mail room, come home, sleep a few hours, and go to work at a local factory all night. She never questioned God. She ended up the quality control head in the lab, a long way from the laundry.

Later, the hospital needed a new person in the facilities department, and I was promoted to facilities manager and after a period of time to facilities director. God was faithful and provided for my family along with my wife working hard every day. From the lowest rung on the ladder to the top was all because God degreed it as such. I often shudder at what my fate would have been if I had railed against God and not taken that security job.

I spent ten years part-time with the sheriff’s department before I left, and after thirty-six years, I retired from the hospital. But God was not done with me. Nine days after I retired and going completely out of my mind bored, I got a call from the large clinic that had bought the hospital.

Would you mind coming back and being the facilities manager? they asked.

I never even asked what I was going to be paid. God was just continuing to point to the open window.

I worked three years and was again ready to retire. God had other ideas. I was promoted to state director of operations and maintenance. And I remain there still. A long way from part-time security.

Over the course of my life, I had always questioned God and his plan. I guess we always do that every now and then. Think we know what’s best. Get angry when God changes the direction we had planned. Then after pouting and throwing a fit, we settle in and find out it was certainly for the best. If I had refused that security job, went against what God wanted me to do, I would never be where I am today. God exchanged a $4.00-an-hour job for a much better one.

God does stuff like that.

Just yesterday, I was lamenting the fact that my favorite birds had left for warmer places. First, the robins, then the red-winged blackbirds, the grosbeaks, and finally, the orioles had gone. Even my friends, the little hummingbirds, had visited the feeders for the last time before heading south.

I sat with my coffee and looked out at the changing trees, the reds of the maples. The gray sky carried with it a fine mist of rain as the thermometer struggled to reach fifty-eight. We would soon be putting our chairs, along with the daily talks my wife and I have in them, away for another winter.

Go back into the house, old man, I thought to myself.

Even my wife’s coffee wasn’t the same without my pals. We had made preparations for the coming changes in the seasons. The garden was slowly being put to bed. The beautiful rose gardens my wife worked so hard on were faintly aromatic, yet I knew it was just a week or so, and they, too, would bid us farewell.

The wood had been split and hauled into the basement. At least I can still do that, I pondered as I prepared to raise myself from the comfort of the deck chair.

Even the miserable mosquitos were avoiding my gaze this damp and gray morning.

Getting up from the chair, I went into the house and sat on the couch, a bit forlorn. I am one who, even though I eagerly await the hunting season, have lived long enough to know the white death that comes soon after. I have difficulty in the winter agreeing with God. I find I do so more in the shortness of the winter days.

Just then the wife noticed a beautiful pileated woodpecker arriving and was working feverishly on a suet offering. We don’t see them often. Simply beautiful, he stayed long enough to bring me out of my funk.

True, God had whispered on the cool breeze and told my friends it was time to go, yet like so many times before, he had provided an alternative to what he had taken away.

The juncos will soon be here, as well as the other winter birds. They will comfort me until the warming rays of spring bring back my friends to the feeders.

I think that as I get older, I am getting a little bit better at accepting things I can’t change and change the things I have control over, perhaps a bit wiser to know the difference in the two. I believe that faith has a lot to do with it. You accept that God has taken something and wait patiently for what he has plans to replace it with.

Even my many scribblings from my youth have turned into six published books. I get comments from people all over the country who have read a bit of them and have let me know that they have either saw themselves in some of the stories or simply were given comfort by the words I had written. I thank God for that as for years, I never thought they were any good, yet God encouraged my wife to in turn encourage me to write, and I continue still.

It’s time for me to go outside and help my wife with what’s left of the fall chores. Perhaps a light jacket is in order. And I have concluded it is a good thing that God controls it all.

Be careful out there.

Goto

One thing you learn when you move to the country is that there are things that have lived there long before you came and have no intention of leaving, not on their own anyway.

My wife and I moved to the country after being in town most of our lives. Our 7.2 acres of heaven was close to town but still away from the ever-growing annoyance of others. The older you get, the less patience you have. Just a fact of life.

People mow their lawns at 10:00 a.m. after they worked a twelve-hour night shift or plow their driveways just before they get into bed or start a trash fire when the wind is blowing toward their home and the smoke from the stinky thing keeps their windows shut tight on a warm summer night.

After many years of putting up with things like this, we arrived at our homestead and began settling in.

It wasn’t long until we realized that living next to a large wood came with various critters that called it home and had no problem coming over to our house.

The soft summer breeze carried with it the announcement of the first of many.

The skunks. Lots of them.

My wife began a full-frontal assault on them. I had taught her mountain man ways, and she soon was swinging a twelve-gauge shotgun better than I could ever swing it. She figured if they stayed in the five-acre field and respected the borders, well, they could move about in peace, but they just had to go into the equipment shed and nose around. The great skunk wars had begun.

As summer rolled into fall, nine skunks had met their maker from various means. All’s quiet on the western front.

The raccoons should have learned from all of this. But alas, they did not, and neither did they stay out of the equipment shed. It was soon evident that they planned on making a home in the insulation above the ceiling.

My wife met the threat head on, and after the smoke of the twelve gauge had settled and the various traps prevailed, again there was quiet where once these sly bandits had full run of the property. She had learned the ways of the trapper and was much better at it than I ever was.

Ever vigilant, she would scan the newly mowed lawn of interlopers. One winter morning, a very large and very furry feral cat arrived on scene. It wasn’t long, and my wife was feeding it and feeling very sorry for this giant of a cat. After all, there were mice to be controlled, and seeing that the cat had found its way into the equipment shed, all the better.

The cat didn’t last long. One morning, we saw a large coyote cruising the edge of the field.

That cat better be careful, I warned. That coyote will make quick work of it if it isn’t careful.

It wasn’t careful. Soon it came no longer to the shed.

The sadness the wife was experiencing was soon replaced by the attention to another midnight raider, the cottontail rabbits.

You would think that with an eighty-acre woods and a five-acre field, the rabbits would be satisfied, but no.

The wife’s roses were more inviting than anything the woods had to offer. Game on.

There was a lot of collateral damage from this one. It got to a point where it didn’t matter where these fuzzy monsters were sitting. If it was in front of my shed, the siding soon had little indentations of .410 shot.

The live traps were set, and if the rabbit was smart, that is where it went. It meant relocating them to other woods far away from the roses if they weren’t so smart. It was all-out war.

Many a winter evening under the full moon and the quiet under the starlit sky was broken by the .410’s roar. Finally, I could not find any indication of rabbits.

An occasional outlier would find its way to the live trap only to be taken to a new location.

The rose gardens flourished for the first time in years. An occasional opossum would venture in and be released with a stern warning. The deer would destroy five very expensive trees, but defensive measures were put into place to keep them away. That war is unwinnable. You just have to accept it. They will eat what they can reach and, in the fall, rub the bark off what they can get at.

Seeing a bald eagle fifty yards from your porch makes it all worth being out in the country.

After relative peace, another feral cat showed up in the dead of winter. You could see he was almost dead on his feet. The wife shoveled a path for him after every snowstorm and began to feed it. After a full year, it comes every day to get food. After eating, it pauses just outside the shed and looks at the house. It doesn’t know it’s our cat.

The wife buys fourteen cans of cat food and bags of dry food for it every payday. The lady at the store mentioned that we must really spoil our cat. We told her we don’t really have a cat, not actually.

The old gray cat has been given the name Goto. He has free range of the property, and although he doesn’t allow us to get within sixty yards of him, I think he has accepted us. He is healthy now and quite large. We will miss him when he finally doesn’t show up each morning.

Country living is a good thing. You battle what you must to keep your homestead safe. You tolerate what you must, and sometimes you take care of things that otherwise would not have much chance of making it without you.

The turkeys come for a free lunch at the bird feeders, flocks of doves as well along with the gray squirrels, but you put the food out anyway. Knowing that God has ordained that you are the keepers of them for a short time, and the doves, turkeys, and gray squirrels are God’s creatures, as well as the beautiful songbirds.

My coffee cup is empty, and it just snowed five inches. Goto will need a path shoveled, and the bird feeders need filling.

Be careful out there.

Hills of Freedom

Raising the Cross On Iwo Jima

July 4

I have always had a different view of the day. I admit to the above things, but I try to pause to remember the meaning of the day, the cost of freedom. I have often sat in my tree stand and pondered on the bravery it takes to keep this country free. How 243 years ago, we fought off the yoke of oppression. What it must have taken that ragtag army to sacrifice everything it had so that they could breathe the air of liberty.

Over the course of my life, I have thought often on the raw courage it must have taken then and throughout the years to maintain it. I think of the battles and the lives sacrificed so that I can be free. Looking out across the autumn fields, I look into the past and try to imagine. The soft breeze kisses my check, and the sun warms my tired bones.

My mind returns to memories past.

I have hunted the coulee country and the Colorado mountains, clawing my way out of the coulees, hunting turkeys in the thin air of the mountains.

There is a saying in the military that goes, Not a hill worth dying for. However, all hills in time of war represent that need to overcome and to fight against all odds to preserve the freedom so many in today’s society take for granted. I refer to these as…the hills of freedom.

Some have recognized names; some has just a simple number for ease of mapping. Nevertheless, everyone who has climbed one in battle has his own names for them.

Bunker Hill. That June day in 1775, when 2,200 British soldiers landed on the Charlestown, Massachusetts Peninsula. What courage it took to face them. Can you imagine the sight as all those trained soldiers landed and headed in? Easier to run and accept the yoke of slavery. However, no one ran.

San Juan Hill. July 1898. The Rough Riders. Teddy Roosevelt and the brave men who stormed into history. Hand to hand and swords flashing. Climbing over your friend’s body. Eyes focused to the top.

Champion Hill. May 16, 1863. Vicksburg, United States. Grant suffered, 410 killed, and 1,844 wounded. A nation on the verge of fracturing, yet the brave blood of both sides reunited a nation. Brothers became brothers again. A nation became a nation again.

The Battle of Hill 60, near Ypres on the Western Front during World War I. The poison gas that was used against those brave souls. The annihilation bombings. No one ran.

Hill 262. August 1944. The Germans retreating and the hell that came upon them from that hill. Courage knows no single nationality. It beats in the heart of all men and women who bow but to God. Those who crave to live free.

Hill 400, forty-five-degree angle, impenetrable forest, and three thousand tanks. Evil wet weather. Army Rangers climbing a 1,315-foot monster.

Mount Suribachi, aka the grinding bowl, looking at it today, it rises 169 meters high above Iwo Jima. The aqua seas and green of the island hide the scars of that battle. Looking at it, you can barely believe that seven thousand Americans and over twenty thousand Japanese lives were lost, and the most magnificent statue ever constructed depicting overcoming the impossible, the raising of the American flag on February 23, 1945, resulted. I shudder at what it took to look up from the base of Suribachi and know the machine-gun fire raining down, yet continuing to move to the top.

Alternatively, heading in on a landing craft and seeing that sight, knowing that in a moment, the ramp would drop, and all those guns would be firing into the small opening as you tried to make it to shore.

Pork Chop Hill, 980 feet high, is shaped like a pork chop, although those who fought there would tell you it was a human chopping block with 243 dead and 916 wounded and unknown enemy losses. Seventy-seven rounds of artillery pounded that hill, hand-to-hand combat all the way to the top, night fighting, and the screaming of dying men.

Triangle Hill, October 14 through November 25, 1952, is the bloodiest and fiercest combat of 1952 Korean War. Frozen ground and frozen feet, it was also the least known battles mentioned by the Western media. The Chinese won that fight but suffered incredible casualties. Countries downplay things when their sons and daughters sacrifice their lives, and it is not perceived as a victory. I think just giving of one’s life for freedom is a victory against evil.

Sniper Hill and the two hills named Jane Russell by the UN Troops were but a part of many hill battles in that terrible war.

Hill 861, Quang Tri Province, is the first battle of Khe Sanh on April 24, 1967, with bravo company, first battalion, ninth marine. Five marines made their way to the top to establish a mortar support position. Four were killed in an ambush, and in the spirit of never leaving a fellow marine behind, fellow marines went up to rescue the lone survivor and retrieve the bodies of their fallen brothers.

Marine losses were 155 dead and 425 wounded while PAVN losses were 940 reported by US sources to have died. The entire battle of Khe Sanh ended July 9 after the base was abandoned; however, Hill 689 maintained a few marines until July 11. I was married on July 11. I pondered if those killed on Hill 861 wanted to someday get married.

Quang Tri Province holds a particular sad note as I pondered. Dennis James Zwirchitz was from my hometown of Abbotsford. He was killed March 16, 1968, less than five months in the country in Quang Tri Province. Semper Fi. Silver Star.

Hill 937 sounds like just another hill in a long list of hills. Those who climbed it however knew it as… Hamburger Hill, ten days